pimblr.com

Niko Henrichon, who wowed the literary world in 2006 with his masterful illustrations for Brian K. Vaughan

Considering Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are headlining Super Bowl XLII’s halftime show, we couldn’t help wondering which other acts would deserve the chance to play to one of the year’s biggest crowds. Of course, then we also got to wondering about what rare musical matchups the event could motivate, especially after great pairings such as Aerosmith and Britney Spears, and Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake (which, okay, ended poorly). Here’s what we came up with.
Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and Hank Jr.
Call this the working-class-hero category. It’s hard to believe Bon Jovi hasn’t taken the stage at halftime yet. And, as the show’s organizers increasingly turn to legends of rock like the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, the Boss’s absence is shaping up into an embarrassing mystery. Throw Hank “Are you ready for some football?!” Williams Jr. into the mix, and this Super Bowl halftime show would surely go down in history as one of the best.
AC/DC, Van Halen, and Foo Fighters
Three generations of guitar rock on one stage. Fans would be cheering over the collective guitar solos from as far away as Long Island.
My Chemical Romance, Queen, and Robbie Williams
My Chemical Romance might seem an odd choice for a headliner, but it takes the top slot because Freddie Mercury is dead and Queen is consequently without a permanent frontman. That’s where Robbie Williams, one of the few singers in the world who can perform with the gravitas of Mercury, comes in. Pair the Williams-fronted Queen with Queen-style arena rockers, My Chem, and you have a fireworks-filled extravaganza that people will be watching from all corners of the globe.
Madonna, Alice Cooper, and Eminem
These three monsters of shock all hail from Detroit. They might not match on paper, but spiritually Madonna, Cooper, and Slim Shady are next of kin.
Tina Turner, Fall Out Boy, and Jay-Z
Tina Turner is arguably the greatest female stage rocker in history. The members of Fall Out Boy have transformed themselves from oft-dismissed emo rockers into arena rock gods with a passion for Turner-size choruses. Toss in Jay-Z, one of the best hip-hop artists of his generation, and maybe you’d get Turner dueting with Patrick Stump on a Fall Out Boy cover of “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” capped by an original third verse in which Jay serenades the influential diva with some freestyle. We’d pay good money to see that.

miaminewtimes.com

Nintendo of Europe yesterday released two new retro titles for download via the Wii’s shop channel for use with the European Virtual Console system. They are as follows:
Street Gangs: a beat-‘em-up title which was originally released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991. Collect cash, buy new abilities, and battle student groups for 500 Wii Points.
Adventure Island: also a NES outing, but this particular side-scrolling action title was first made available in 1992. Players take the role of Master Higgins as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend. 500 Wii Points.
Recent news stories
A fan-made, 8-bit version of the classic Playstation RPG.
“Ever wondered what it would be like to become a Pokémon?”
New information from the latest issue of NGamer.
Downloadable content to be offered via Xbox Live.
Less than three years taken to reach the significant milestone.
Fresh new screenshots and concept artwork.
With a 40” Samsung Crystal TV up for grabs.
Next in-house console title could be for the Wii.
Sequel to the puzzle/RPG hybrid takes the gameplay in a new direction.
Head of Sony Computer Entertainment is out the door.

gwn.com

A new study by researchers in the UK suggests that antidepressants only benefit the very severely depressed and are no more effective than a placebo for everyone else.
The meta-analytical study (ie one that systematically pools the results of other studies) is the work of Dr Irving Kirsch, from the University of Hull, and his colleagues, and is published today, 26th February, in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.
Antidepressants are prescribed for the treatment of clinical depression, and the most widely used are the “new generation” drugs, the SSRIs such as fluoxetine (Prozac) and venlafaxine (Effexor).
Previous meta-analytical studies of antidepressants have already suggested they have only modest benefits over placebos, and the authors pointed out that when data from unpublished trials are included, the benefits are so small they fall below the criteria for clinical significance. What has not been clear in the past however, is whether within this overall result, the effectiveness of antidepressants depends on how severely depressed patients are when they start treatment.
Kirsch and colleagues pooled all the available full data sets from all clinical trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for licensing four of the new generation of antidepressants, the SSRIs fluoxetine (Prozac), venlafaxine (Effexor), nefazodone (Serzone), and paroxetine (Seroxat, Paxil). The data came from both published and unpublished trials.
The point of including data from unpublished as well as published trials, is to avoid potential bias arising from the omission of “disappointing” unpublished findings.
SSRI stands for “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors”. This new type of antidepressant, like the older ones, works by attempting to stabilize chemicals in the brain that influence mood, except that SSRIs specifically target and increase the circulating levels of a brain chemical called serotonin, a neurotransmitter that regulates mood. They do this by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin so that more of it is available for binding to cell receptors.
Using meta-analytical techniques (a way of pooling data from a range of studies as if they were one big study with broadly the same objectives) the authors assessed the relation between the initial severity of depression and the improvements shown by drug and placebo groups, as well as the relation between initial severity and differences in drug-placebo improvement scores.
The results showed that:
Drug-placebo differences got bigger as initial severity went up.
This difference was hardly noticeable at moderate levels of initial depression, went up to a relatively small difference for patients with severe depression, and reached a level that would be classed as clinically significant only in those patients at the extreme end of the very depressed scale.
The improvement seemed to result from the most severely depressed patients not responding as well to placebo compared to their less depressed counterparts, than because they responded better to the active drug.
Kirsch and colleagues concluded that:
“Drug-placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients.”
“The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication,” they added.
In other words, the difference in effect between drug and placebo was only clinically significant in those patients who were very severely depressed at the start of their treatment and this effect was more likely due to a weaker response to the placebo than a stronger response to the drug itself in that group.
This study is important because although licensing authorities like the FDA in the US and NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) in the UK have approved SSRIs for treating depression, there are nagging doubts about how effective they are.
Depression, which affects about 1 in 6 people at some point in their life, is a serious medical condition characterized by imbalances in brain chemicals that regulate mood. The illness, which can last for months and sometimes years, makes a person feel unmotivated, worthless, hopeless, and sometimes even that life is so futile it would be better to be dead. Depression is often a cause of suicide.
Severity of depression is measured using a questionnaire called the Hamilton Rating Scale of Depression (HRSD) which comprises up to 21 items. If the total score comes to 18 or more, the person is classed as severely depressed.
For an antidepressant to receive a license, clinical trials have to show that it can significantly improve the HRSD score compared to a placebo.
Different countries have slightly different clinical criteria for how much the HRSD score has to improve by before the drug can be licensed to treat depression. In the UK, NICE require that the drug show an improvement in the HRSD score of 3.
A previous meta-analysis of published and unpublished trials sent to the FDA for licensing these drugs showed they only have an average benefit of 1.8 HRSD points.
The reason this study was done was to find out if underneath this 1.8 average there might be subgroups of patients for whom the improvement score was significantly higher, perhaps within the range required by NICE.
And indeed, this is what Kirsch and colleagues found: the clinical criteria were only met when the drugs were used to treat the most severely depressed patients, that is ones with an initial HRSD score of 28 or more, at the extreme end of the scale. And perhaps just as important, is the finding that this effect did not arise as a result of responding to the drug, but because of decreased responsiveness to the placebo.
This last, rather surprising finding, provides a new direction for future research.
“Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.”
Kirsch I, Deacon BJ, Huedo-Medina TB, Scoboria A, Moore TJ, et al.
PLoS Medicine Vol. 5, No. 2, e45
Published online: February 26, 2008.
How Interesting Was This Article?

medicalnewstoday.com

The capital bases of the major banks and dealers are being reduced by losses on the mark-to-market value of securities faster than they can raise new money. That means that because nobody wants to buy a lot of the structured credit products, credit made available by the entire system could contract. That would lead to more losses, and a further contraction of credit.
We call that a depression…
I have made enquiries in the relevant official circles about the current state of thinking on the enforcement of mark-to-market rules… For structured credits, such as CDOs, where valuations are being done on the basis of illiquid and arguably oversold indices, the accountants would be encouraged to find ways to value the securities that don’t result in a cycle of mark-to-illiquid-market followed by liquidation, followed by more marks, and so on.
Also, it has been suggested by some dealers, whose capital bases are getting too stretched to adequately maintain market liquidity, that they be given access to the Federal Reserve’s discount window and the generous Term Auction Facility. That would provide enough extra liquidity to keep more securities from being dumped into the capital-eating illiquid valuation “buckets”. This idea is likely to be taken seriously by the authorities.
I think the idea of allowing investment banks to access the TAF is a reasonable one: it helps to achieve exactly what the TAF was designed to achieve in the first place.
But what Dizard doesn’t mention is that a lot of the looming problem comes not from marking to market, but rather from rules which have meant banks not having to mark to market. I’m talking about all those securities on banks’ balance sheets which are rated triple-A thanks to a now-worthless monoline wrap. Since triple-A securities have a zero risk weighting for capital adequacy purposes, banks have to put aside zero capital against them. The minute the monolines get downgraded, the banks suddenly have to mark these highly illiquid bonds to market. The banks then take two simultaneous capital hits: the first because the bonds aren’t zero risk-weighted any more and therefore need capital to be held against them, and the second because of the write-downs on the mark-to-market losses.
Is marking banks’ assets to market really a Doomsday machine? Remember that in the film the Russians built their machine not just because it was effective, but also because it was cheap. "Our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines," says the Russian ambassador to the US. "Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year." Marking to market is a bit like that: effective and cheap, but also prone to a disastrous blow-up.
There is an alternative: call it the old-fashioned French approach, now adopted by the Chinese. Allow banks to keep assets on their books at par unless or until they’re paid off or they are sold at a loss. All manner of losses can be hidden that way for decades if necessary. It’s not a system I’d ever want to move to, but it does have one or two advantages.

portfolio.com

What is true beauty? That’s the question Reese Witherspoon’s latest flick “Penelope” tackles. The romantic comedy was produced by the Oscar winning actress in which she stars alongside Christina Ricci, James McAvoy and Catherine O’Hara.
In the film Christina Ricci takes a bold step in covering her pig like nose. Faced with the family curse, Penelope (Christina Ricci) must overcome all obstacles by finding true love. The warm and funny adventure leads her to realize the most important life lesson, “I like myself the way I am.”
Hollyscoop was at the Los Angeles movie premiere where we caught up with the stars from the flick and got the scoop. The movie doesn’t hit theatres until February 29, 2008 but to learn more about the film log on to Hollyscoop Movies. In the meantime, check out our video coverage from the Hollywood movie premiere.

hollyscoop.com

Tyler Anderson/National Post Jim Spyropoulos, principal of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute in Toronto, poses for a portrait in the hallway between classes.
A girl in a burka, holding a poster she made about Mexico, stands in the entrance of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute singing O Canada. Her principal, swimming in his khaki pants and corduroy jacket, holds his hand on his heart and stares down a pair of denim-clad boys sporting acne on their foreheads who jostle each other as if they were in the food court at nearby Jane-Finch Mall.
The national anthem–played on the loudspeaker every morning at 9 a.m. as it has been since the school opened in 1964 — is less than two minutes long, and when it finishes, it’s as if a dam has burst, with a good portion of C.W. Jefferys’ 890 students spilling forth. Directing traffic, shouting encouragement, offering "How you doing, man, you good?" greetings to the teens, is Jim Spyropoulos, who’s in his fifth month at the helm of the city’s most notorious high school.
"Good morning, sir, hi mister!" screams the girl with the Mexican placard who, along with her classmates in the ESL travel and tourism program, surrounds the principal. "Mister, will you come to our class today and see what we made?"
"Definitely, girls, of course I’ll be there," says Spyropoulos as the students make themselves scarce. It’s just after 9:05 a.m., and the principal now walks the graffiti-free hallways alone.
Spyropoulos, who took this job while his wife was seven months pregnant with his second child, leaves his East York home every morning at 7:30 a.m. After a drive-through visit to Coffee Time and a few morning meetings, he greets arriving students at the front entrance. "It’s important that people see me," he says, adding that after the death of Jordan Manners last May, Jefferys was given two additional hall monitors — they now have four.
A government-commissioned report on school safety by human rights lawyer Julian Falconer was released on Jan. 1. Weighing in at over 1,000 pages, The Road to Health: A Final Report on School Safety includes results of a student survey conducted at Jefferys and neighbouring Westview Centennial Secondary School, and makes a substantial claim of drug dealing, bullying and sexual assaults taking place at the school.
"The guy [Falconer] is reputable, and my boss, the Toronto District SchoolBoard, spent $800,000 on this report, so if he says it’s there, then it’s there," Spyropoulos concedes, adding that the TDSB has placed him in control of his resources — he can trade three hall monitors for a vice-principal or one VP for two social workers (there is currently one social worker assigned to eight different schools). But Spyropoulos says his No. 1 resource is his time.
"It’s these guys, man. They lived it right here in this hallway, they were standing right here," Spyropoulos says, pointing out the spot before the second floor washroom where Manners, five days after his 15th birthday, succumbed to a gunshot wound to the chest. "People come in and say they have a five-year plan or a three-year plan, but that’s bullsh–. You can change a school around in three hours, you just have to treat them everyday like you care, and word spreads. A place like this? Holy sh–, it spreads like wildfire."
There are 32 cameras posted around C.W. Jefferys, which Spyropoulos can access from his office computer, though he prefers to spend time in the halls. "I wouldn’t want this job if I was looking at cameras," he says.
Clerks in the administrative office move quickly. They’re short-staffed — a secretary is out on personal leave. Now a teacher is desperate for permission slips to take 46 students to New York. "Jen, man," says Spyropoulos. "I’ll get you those slips today."
It’s the third Wednesday in January, a day before end-of-semester exams, and both the first-year vice-principals Spyropoulos hired are out of the office. The last administrative regime was sent home with pay in June, pending the results of an investigation into whether they failed to report information about six students sexually assaulting a Muslim girl in a school washroom.
In his office, Spyropoulos fields a phone call from a parent who is disturbed that her two daughters are getting unfair treatment in English class. Spyropoulos agrees to meet the mother next week.
"For these parents, sending their kids here is the most important part of their world," he explains. "A kid got shot and killed in this school. You’d think everyone would be pulling kids out of here like crazy, but all they want is to send them here everyday and for us to teach them and then send them home. That’s my responsibility and it’s taken a lot of work."
When the 10:30 a.m. bell rings to start Period B, Spyropoulos searches the hallways for the ESL travel and tourism class. He runs into the prom committee, promising to join them on Friday to scrutinize banquet halls, and gives a young man who’s talking on a cellphone an incredulous look. (The student eventually arrested in the Manners case was seen on a cellphone immediately after the body was found; they’ve been verboten ever since.)
"Hi sir," says a boy galloping up a stairwell, tucking a blue bandana into his pocket.
"I swear to God, if I see you in the hallway again, we’re going to have a serious problem," the principal says. "Get to class."
Spyropoulos also fields questions from teachers who want his reaction to Julian Falconer’s TVO appearance last night.
"Personally, I found it pretty useless," the French teacher says.
"You’re tired of it, right?" asks Spyropoulos.
"Yeah, they’re against suspensions — well, what’s the other alternative? Is the board saying anything?" she asks.
"Not to me they’re not," he says. "So what are we supposed to do?" asks the teacher.
"Do what you’ve got to do, like we’ve been doing," he says, then excuses himself and doubles back past the cafeteria. He locates the tourism class, who are presenting their selected countries to a teacher as the Hannah Montana soundtrack plays softly.
"Where’s your thing, man?" he asks a young boy with a T-shirt featuring Pac-Man tricked-out with a diamond-encrusted grill.
"Mister, I couldn’t find a poster," says the kid. Spyropoulos tells him
to keep his pants up as he turns and walks through the swinging brown door to the stairwell.
"Take away that triple-X T-shirt and those huge pants and he’s just a skinny kid," Spyropoulos says after the bell dismisses the children to lunch. "A little tiny kid that’s just 15 years old — like Jordan, just a tiny little kid."
During lunch, inside the cafeteria, the music is loud. The student DJ blasts Lil Wayne and 50 Cent on the loudspeaker as kids play cards, dance or sit huddled together with biology text books, dipping their straws into cartons of chocolate milk.
Raised by his mother in Regent Park after the death of his dad, Spyropoulos says he suffered a breakdown when he was a 12-year-old student at Lord Dufferin Public School. "No kid should have to go through a moment that dark," he says, crediting a teacher who rescued him from his home and brought him back to school with making him want to teach.
When the students first told Spyropoulos they wanted to have a lunchtime DJ, his first thought was no. But he decided to give them a chance. "I want them to love it here," he says, handing a student a lunch voucher. "When you start with that, it’s amazing what follows."
After huddling with the girls’ soccer team to talk about an upcoming trip to Montreal, Spyropoulos brings Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope to the library, where he finds a student getting frustrated with his computer.
"What’s the matter, man?" Spyropoulos asks. The student informs him that he can’t get his paper to print. After seeing that every other computer is occupied, the principal lets the student work at his desk.
Inside the office, the student runs into Jacquie Mitchell, the school council chair. "You getting your work done?" she asks.
"Yeah," grunts the student. "Yeah," responds Mitchell, "you better be–or your mother will kick your ass." Mitchell soon sends a hall monitor to her home to pick up an extra computer for the student.
Spyropoulos, familiar with both the Jane-Finch community and gun violence — he was a vice-principal at nearby Emery Collegiate in February, 2000, when three students were shot in the school parking lot — addresses race: "People told me I had to watch out because there were black administrators before me and people were going to say, ‘We had to bring in whitey to save the day.’
"But I haven’t felt that for a second," he explains. "The people in this community have welcomed me with open arms."
A few of the lockers seem to be hanging off their hinges as Spyropoulos greets students at the beginning of fourth period. One student, who recently received a $5,000 university scholarship, is celebrating his sixteenth birthday. There’s also a pair of students who change course when they see the principal.
"Sorry sir, we’re exiting this door right here," the student says. His friend, Spyropoulos points out, does not attend Jefferys C.I.
"Sometimes, you don’t even have to say anything. These kids know what they can’t do," he says.
The last class of the day lets out at 3:10 p.m. and Spyropoulos is there to see students off.
Most will take buses home, but the students cluster in the front entrance — playfighting with the hall monitor from their neighbourhood, one boy flirting with a girl before the trophy-case tribute to Manners.
Spyropoulos gives the students quick hugs and high fives as he wishes them luck on tomorrow’s exams.
Later, he’ll meet with the Jane-Finch Concerned Citizens Group about Jefferys’ black history month schedule and write a university recommendation for a student from his last school. He’ll also call his wife and promise he’ll be home in an hour to spend time with his children and visiting mother-in-law. But for now he takes a group of beaming students back into his office. Earlier in the day, he promised them T-shirts, and they’re here to collect.
"Love your school, man," he says, as the group slips the shirts over their clothing. "Love your school."

nationalpost.com

(RTTNews) - Bank of Hawaii Corp. (BOH| news |PowerRating | PR Charts ) on Monday reported fourth-quarter net income of $40.86 million or $0.83 per share, down from $50.91 million, or $1.01 per share, for the year-ago quarter.
On average, four analysts polled by First Call/ Thomson Financial expected the company to report earnings of $0.94 per share.
Quarterly net interest income declined to $99.45 million from $100.2 million in the comparable period last year. Total non-interest income recorded were $60.26 million, up from $53.52 million a year ago.
Analysts had a consensus revenues estimate of $158.80 million.
The company’s board of directors also declared a dividend of $0.44 per share, which will be payable on March 14, 2008, to shareholders of record at the close of business on February 29, 2008.
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tradingmarkets.com

After much anticipation, Saturday Night Live is set to return this weekend following the end of the writers’ strike.
The 16-week break for SNL has finally come to an end and fans of the show could not be happier.
“I think everybody is thrilled to be back, and excited,” Michaels said.He has also done something he never thought he would do again: commit to producing new shows for four straight weeks.
“We haven’t done that since 1976,” Mr. Michaels said in a telephone interview, “when I came to the conclusion that it is a very bad idea.”
What did its performers miss? Only the most heated political primary season in years.
“I think everybody is thrilled to be back, and excited,” Michaels said.”It’s hard not to say it’s been the election,” says head writer and Weekend Update anchor Seth Meyers. “It’s been called by the media at least five times” since the show last aired. “We’ve missed eight or nine coronations.”
Tina Fey is set to return to SNL as the host, with Carrie Underwood as the musical guest.
The last new episode of SNL was on November 3rd and featured Barack Obama.
Next week on tap is Ellen Page of Juno.

overthelimit.info

NEW YORK — Authorities say a middle school math teacher in Forest Hills, Queens, is accused of sending sexually explicit instant messages to eight boys.
District Attorney Richard A. Brown said Monday that the boys are 12 or 13 years old; all were students, or former students, of the defendant, Bradley Dieffenbacher.
Dieffenbacher also is accused of asking boys to use Web cameras during sex acts and sending links to online pornography sites.
The prosecutor said Diffenbacher, a 33-year-old resident of Levittown, on Long Island, was arraigned over the weekend on charges including child endangerment and use of a child in a sexual performance.
He faces up to 15 years in state prison if convicted.
His attorney did not immediately return a call requesting comment.

foxnews.com